>> our motto is even now when you we didn't have any money to go until they invited us to leave. and with that attitude, adalat has two somehow kept her education for survival. i don't know how we link to it that, but no one wanted to go back home without what they went to school for. is it desperation situation. workshops, ballet. seriously, my mother has a better sisters. if i needed something, they were all there. it was just to collect their families and our friendship and determination. if he looked at the scholarship and i was more qualified, he wouldn't be upset about it. we just talked. best believe we were in the office every semester trying to get a hold of the city can register for the next semester. which is came up with creative stories every semester. and then we told them at it on a payment plan. the richest resource on did what it took to continue.

but it was really tough. it was so tough that a young person came and asked me today how you did it, you just have to go and pray and use all the resources and tools around you and the people around you and really go for it and have faith that it's going to work out. you've got to let people see what you're trying to do and you take the first step. it will calm. i pray for them. it happened for all three of us, which is kind of phenomenal that we all three made it with no money all those years. >> next, a few interviews her recent trip to freedom fest in an inner libertarian conference held in las vegas. first, stephen moore join to discuss his book, who's the fairest of them all? in which a free market are awarding system is preferable to their fairness is based on outcomes. this is about 15 minutes.

stephen moore in your latest book, "who's the fairest of them all?" can you quote president obama said in 2011, we sought to ensure every citizen can count on some basic measure of security. we can do this because we recognize and matter how responsibly with live our lives, anyone of us us at any moment my face hard times, might face bad luck, might face a crippling illness or layoff. but followed that statement? >> guest: that's absolutely true. that's what we have a safety net in this country, for people who do fall on hard times. i have no problem with someone who does have a terrible illness or suffers loss of jobs. i think where there's been a backlash if, for example, giving people to tears of unemployment. most americans say wait a minute commute is your job come in the

government will give you assistance. two years of assistance? we are not sure that is so smart. there's a lot of welfare programs in my opinion that become substitutes for work. i think the food stamps program is a good example of that. this is a program to help people when they are temporarily need. now we have 48 million people food stamps. there's something wrong with our economy or government, when one out of every seven families needs to put food on their table. >> host: was strongly fairness in economics? >> guest: i believe in economics, but i also believe in growth. the reason i wrote it is the truth is i don't want to spoil the ending, but the truth is that fair system of the mom is the free enterprise system. that is the place to jobs and the opportunity that when you have free enterprise system,

baha'is living danner, the vast majority of the people. one of my concerns, another motivation for writing this book book -- people lose their jobs. there's also a massive corporate welfare states where we give away hundreds of billions of dollars ea to corporations. i don't think the government should be picking winners and losers in the free-market system. >> host: stephen moore, is it fair to tax people at different rates, i.e. tax wealthy people like the warren buffets at a higher rate than you would a middle-class person? >> guest: i don't think so and here's why. i think the most economically optimal tax system, the system that will create the most jobs, most opportunity, the most well

for america is a flat tax rate inconsistent. not four, five, six, seven ray. this is a system that can be defended not just on economic growth model because those people would agree that just in terms of growth from a flatter system with lower rates and higher tax rates. but also when fairness. let me make this case to you. you and i make the same amount of money. i know you make a lot more than i do. this didn't make the same amount of money. if we live next door, there's something fundamentally unfair if you're paying a lot less taxes than i am. one of the virtues of the flat tax system is that everybody pays their fair share. there's not all these coverups. there's does all these loopholes. you don't get a deduction for investing in windmills and all this other stuff. most americans say that's a fair

system. you make 10 times our money than i do, you pay 10 times more tax. >> host: you write in "who's the fairest of them all?," one of the premises of this book is that it is equally, and maybe even more plausible to say that liberals don't care. tusculum he put it it like this. i believe a lot of these programs liberals have created over the last 50 or 60 years have really created an kind of increased poverty in this country or we wouldn't have if we stuck with a system much more dependent on the free enterprise system. we've seen now fourth-generation americans in this kind of poverty cycle that just keeps going after one generation to the next. so if we put in place the policies i talk about in this book, letting people invest their own money, social security so they can have a decent

retirement, giving every american, whether rich or poor the most opportunities and choices of where to send their kids to school. >> host: this is what you write and i want to see if there's any difference here. those who say the middle-class is no better off today should try living for a week or two without a personal computer, a cell phone, color tv, much less internet, air conditioning, modern medicine. therefore the middle-class is much better off. >> host: a lot of people say how could stephen moore say people are better off? last three, four, five years the economy has not been very well. the middle-class median family income has fallen by $3000 since the recession began. so this has been a tough time for the middle-class.

absolutely. i'm talking about the things the middle-class has access to today versus 25 years ago. there's just no comparison. all those things you mention, the computer, cell phone, ipod. for example, just to give you one example in medicine, if 30 years ago you had been diagnosed with cancer, the doctor was essentially handing you a death certificate. today we have very high survival rates and cancer. we are getting there. same with heart disease and so many other ailments. look what's happened with aids. we reduced the death rate from aids by 90% at 25 years. that's an astonishing achievement. so i find this to be very peculiar when i talk to young people because they believe this is a terrible time to be alive, that there's all these problems in the world. my gosh, we are inherited a terrible situation when we go

into the workforce. i sayhow many of you kids in this room have a cell phone? they all raise their hand. how many of you have a laptop computer? they'll raise their hand. how many of you have the internet? have the kids are on an ipod while i get my lectures. by the way, may 18, 19-year-olds think living without cell phones and ipods and laptop computers and the internet, they think it's like fred flintstone. they can imagine living without these things. we're both old enough to remember we didn't have these things. it wasn't so long ago. every time i give my speech on this, i tell the story in the book. one of my favorite movies, remember the movie wall street? there's a great team or michael douglas, for those of you haven't seen the movie, he's the master of the universe and he's

walking down the beaches of atlantic city and he's got a cell phone in his hand. it's like a brick with an antenna coming out of it. so i went back because that movie was made almost exactly 25 years ago. i went and looked at how much the cell phone cost in 1987. do you want to take a guess how much it was? or thousand dollars. that thing by the way was not a smartphone, didn't have a camera, would give you answers. but the kind of progress that has benefited the middle class so much. let me just mention something else that you brought up. you know, as we speak, i've been writing at "the wall street journal" about a big fight the washington d.c. of having what they want to require wal-mart to pay $12.50 an hour for their workers. wal-mart is saying if you do this, we may not locate in washington d.c. we may locate in the outer region because we can do for the

$12.50 raise. it's interesting that the people if obama were to follow through with that and not locate washington d.c., who said 300 to 400 people who would get those jobs? more importantly, wal-mart gives people everyday embraces. you go to wal-mart today yucatán near anything you want for 99 cents. a number of studies suggest, just something to think about, that wal-mart has done more to lift the living standards of poor people that all of the government and anti-poverty programs over the last couple years. >> host: stephen moore stage of this economics writer for "the wall street journal" editorial page. his income inequality is something we should keep an eye on? >> guest: sure, absolutely. there's no question that if you look over the last 30 years, you've seen an immense amount of fortunes built up.

an almost unimaginable in history. bill gates has more money than most countries. warren buffett, to. we have william ayers that even during the gilded age, we didn't have so much wealth. the question i always ask is does it hurt anyone but the place has $40 billion to $50 billion? i say no, bill gates alone has created dozens of billionaires. so has warren buffett. so have the people who create the business. i worry about is there's too much envy. read more bill gates and more warren buffets and more people like steve jobs. steve jobs is another great example. steve jobs created hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country. when he died, he was a multi, mark a billionaire. most people think this country was greatly enriched by the fact

that steve jobs is here in america. but i would say is there's too much concentration. even her question, with all due respect. that's the focus of too many policymakers. my focus is how do we make sure everyone has that right? over the last 25 years to 1982 until the time of the recession, there's no question the middle-class is better off. the middle-class or significant income gains. even my would come people, one of the statistics i have in this book is if you look at somebody at any point in time and many say okay, 10 years later, how much is different from grown? you are not going to believe this, but it's true. in 10 years time, the people of the biggest economic events or people at the bottom. one of the great features about the american economy is where an income elevator.

a mobility more so than any other country. anyone can succeed in this country. we see this every day with the immigrants who come in with a shirt on my back 10 or 20 years later. the members of the middle-class or higher. >> host: stephen moore, it's been 10 years since the bush tax cut. >> guest: they were built for the most part. >> host: you talk about them in your book, transcendent. >> guest: here's my take on the bush tax cuts. i think president obama made a mistake in january when he was certainly in the skies because what we were doing was cutting taxes on investments. i was one of the people of vice president bush in 2003. he was trying to say he asked a bunch of economists like myself, how to get the economy moving again? reset tab east taxes on capital investment to beget more businesses here, more jobs so that everyone benefits.

i think for the most part that was a success. i'm worried that we raised taxes on the best and cannot raise taxes on american businesses, either real worry that it's going to hurt the job creation process. the other impact of this site that we actually encourage people and businesses to outsource countries that china, india, europe. i hate it when i see an american company is building a fact or somewhere else. if you cut me, i bleed red white and blue. you're not going to get those jobs here to raising taxes on capital, on businesses and raising taxes on entrepreneurs. >> host: i want to ask you, there's a line that sometimes democrats use, presidents use that they think they've hit a home run when they started on there to begin with.

>> guest: i think that is really -- i think that's an insulting thing to say because there's so many examples in this country of people who i just mentioned. people came with only the shirt on their. there's no question grow up in high income neighborhoods with access to good schools. they do have an advantage over people who grew up in inner cities school is a monthly neighborhoods. that's an image troubles and quite frankly. this is another theme of the book. what i believe is equality and opportunity. you and i are starting the race. we should both have the same opportunities to win that race. we've got to make sure that every low income person has a good school to go to and so on and so forth. but we should not, not, not strive for equality of outcomes.

that is to say we are starting the same race and you start faster come you work harder, you do the right things and i don't, that doesn't mean we should have the same income 20 years from now. >> host: even here in america you represent and have experience with giving people an equal amount. the ramifications of such policies have not been fitting. butter the certification by >> guest: i think again when you have these welfare programs that have grown appropriated as they have so much. either way, over 50 welfare programs at the federal level has reduced incentives to work. it is people poverty trap. if someone gives them a hand up, but i don't believe in giving a handout. most americans are with me on that. even if we do not programs, america generous people. they will find ways to help people in need. if we have an economy to grow at

a faster pace than we are right now, we're just not growing fast enough. you're not going to get people out of poverty. you've got to go two or three times faster not. that's one of the things that motivates me economist. what policy can we put in place right now to get the factory 3% to 4% growth value. the great thing about economic growth as it solves our deficit problem. it solves the wealth problem. we can have money for schools and science and all things president obama believes in. if you don't have economic growth, we are all sick in our hands than for a reduced number of marbles. >> host: stephen moore, where freedom fest, libertarian gap here in vegas. we tacked to other authors. jim rogers, a little bit on the sky is falling, too much money,

gold standard. do you share their views? >> guest: i'm kind of the activists here. people here are are up domestic. i believe in america. look, the way i put it as we have a lot of problems in this country no doubt about it. we talk all the time about the problems we have. we are the least rotten apple in the car. so you think we've got problems, look at all these other countries. i do believe i have this quote in the book better is the divine providence that put america here on this planet as a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world. the great, great thing about americans is we are very practical people. if something isn't working, we change it. i think americans are saying whatever we're doing in washington right now is not working. this is why about the book. you'll see a lot of these ideas take fruition in the next two or

ever 10 years. they are going to work and make people better off. that is my profoundest wish. it could have been. we can see three, four, 5% growth. a rising tide will solve this. >> host: we've been talking with stephen moore, whose most recent book published by encounter, transcendent truth about opportunity, taxes and wealth in america. you are watching booktv on c-span 2. >> now more from freedom fest. posts that we want to introduce you to jim powell, whose new book is the fight for liberty: critical lessons for the fight for the last 2000 years. what is your approach with this